Geography and Environment of Moldova

Moldova encompasses what was until August 1991 the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, and is located between Romania and Ukraine. Except for a small strip of land on the Danube River, the country is land‑locked. Moldova is a relatively small country, roughly 300 km long and 100 km across. The area east of the Dniester (Nistru) river, along with the city of Bender west of the Dniester, is the breakaway and officially unrecognized Transnistrian Moldovan Republic, or Transnistria. Transnistria is not recognized by Moldova, the U.S., or any other country. Tiraspol is the "capital" of Transnistria. Moldova’s total population is 4.3 million, of whom 800,000 live in Chisinau. The majority of the population lives in the countryside in villages organized around former state farms. The countryside is comprised mainly of gently rolling agricultural lands with a gradual slope south toward the Black Sea. Seventy percent of the soil is composed of the famous, fertile "Black Earth" (chernozim) in this region. Because of the clearing of land for agricultural cultivation—especially in the Soviet era for grape production—there are few forests or woodlands. There has been soil erosion due to farming methods

Detailed geography